


Bella Ciao

by somegunemojis



Series: Tender Mercies [21]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:01:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26303833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somegunemojis/pseuds/somegunemojis
Summary: Oh partisan carry me away, because I feel death approaching
Relationships: Bettino Tahan/Alessio Rossi
Series: Tender Mercies [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1893175





	Bella Ciao

30 November, 2015 -- Kandahar, Afghanistan.

The firefight started at 0243 in the streets of a decrepit, abandoned town with crumbling buildings and dusty roads. They were on patrol with some locals— him, Rossi, Rana and Rospo, Brutto and Mammone and some local security forces in training scattered among the buildings. Rossi was pink-cheeked and bright, sighing out great clouds of crystalline breath in the cold moonlight from the cloudless sky, making bad jokes about being a dragon. Their lack of quality couldn’t keep the small answering grin from Tahan’s face, something half-cocked and tucked into his collar. Rospo had asked if he’d ever seen snow with something close to incredulity in his tone, about as much expression as any of them had ever seen from the man, and Rossi’s wide-eyed reply was punched out of him before he’d even had a chance to get the first word out, a fine red mist splattering onto Tahan’s face.

Then they heard the shot.

It spurred their loose formation into action as they leaped to cover and following the trajectory of the bullet to its source. The night erupted into sound, the sharp rapport of an AK-47 in a window off to the left. Their squad returned fire, and Tahan fell into a crouch and darted the two feet separating him from Rossi, gripped the straps of his gear, and dragged him into a doorway behind a grim Rana and one of the trainees, Allaiwal. He crouched over the man and swallowed the bile that rose in his throat when he saw the damage — glassy brown eyes, no breath, an entry wound an inch under his jaw and an exit wound gaping where his brain stem should have been. He’d seen worse, gorier, crueler. Dead before he hit the ground but his pretty face was still intact and-- He had to tell himself that to get his lungs to pull in some air, and when he licked his lips to try and wet his mouth, he could taste blood. He nearly gagged on it, but he still had a job to do.

The firefight was over before it really began. A half dozen men firing on a lone window could only miss so many times in five seconds, and when the night quieted Tahan let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He carefully ran his hand over Rossi’s eyes to close them, a smear of blood left behind over a slack face. Grit his teeth, gripped his rifle. The night rang with shouted commands, suggestions, curses, and his voice cut through it all in short, barked out commands. _Fan out, check for any more surprises— Rana, call for a CASEVAC and bag him, Allaiwal, you’re with me._ The slighter man shadowed him with a silent nod, and everyone else jumped to their assignments.

Tahan led them to the squat building with his rifle ready, grip steady. Focused. The initial screech of the hinges on the door made him cringe, but as they stepped over the threshold and into the dark, the house remained silent. Blood was smeared on the windowsill, on the ground. Bullet holes riddled the wall behind them, and the room smelled like gunsmoke, like unwashed bodies lying in wait, like death.

But there was no body.

They exchanged glances, Tahan’s flat, Allaiwal’s a little nervous. They didn’t speak, but as he stalked back into the night after the scattered blood trail, Allaiwal followed. Their footsteps made no sound in the streets, two hunters on the prowl under the pale moonlight, and the sounds of their team clearing the buildings behind them faded into the distance. They were breaking protocol. Nobody called them back.

The specks of blood led them out of town. His body was steady, his eyes focused, even as his head felt fizzy and light, pulse pounding somewhere high in his throat and his heart stuttering away somewhere in his chest. The wind picked up away from the shelter of the cluster of solid buildings, cutting against the skin of his cheeks, his nose, his neck. The blood led them on, great globs of clotting and widespread speckling among the scattered stones and dry dirt. The gore on his face, the bits of Rossi that still clung to his skin were drying into flakes, gumming his eyelashes and gluing his mouth shut. He breathed through his nose, though for the first time in his life the smell of copper was making his stomach roll. The trail led on, into the dark. It dried up, and he circled to look for the trail, as Allaiwal kept eyes on the ridges, looking for movement, for an ambush. Something howled in the distance. He picked up the trail fifty meters from the last spot, just as he was starting to lose something he didn’t dare call hope. They pressed on.

They found the man half by accident when Tahan nearly tumbled into the ravine that had put an end to their adversary. Allaiwal gripped his sleeve and saved his life, roughly jerking him back and putting his feet on solid ground. The near-miss set his heart pounding once more, choking him. He stared down at the corpse as they clutched each other’s shoulders, unable to tear his eyes away from the twisted form, the broken bones, and the gaping wound in the nameless stranger’s shoulder that would have put an end to him sooner rather than later, if the fall hadn’t. He swallowed hard, and tried to feel something. Satisfaction, disgust. He couldn’t. 

Allaiwal must have seen something on his face, because he stuttered something out. Tahan couldn’t understand him for a moment, blinked uselessly, realized— he was speaking English.

“ — Sorry?”

“I said —” he swallowed hard, as the whites of his eyes seemingly took up all of his face. “Do not worry, someone will come to bury him. We should go.”

The percussive sound of a chopper echoed faintly through the valley, and he turned his gaze up to the ridge above them. There, on the edge: a lone rider on horseback, a black shape silhouetted by the moon. He raised his hand in greeting, and Allaiwal made a nervous sound behind him. The rider raised their hand back, and then turned and disappeared from view, and silence reigned, and so he thought about Rossi, being sent home to his mother in a heavy box. He thought about standing on her doorstep in Taranto with an apology on his lips and heaviness in his weary heart. It pressed on his chest, and he turned his gaze back to the corpse in the ravine, bile in his throat at the futility of a single man shooting at a six man cell, of dying alone. What was the fucking point of it all?

Worry? I wouldn’t say worried.

It was the first clear thought he had since dragging the corpse of his best friend into a cold, empty house an hour ago, and so Tahan didn’t say anything. He shrugged one shoulder, turned his back on the cooling body, and followed a similarly silent Allaiwal back to the remains of their squad in that tiny, forgotten town.


End file.
